Sometimes I've congratulated myself with this message when I am giving blood, but I didn't really believe it: we do things because they make us feel good, and donating blood, it seems, is no different.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham, UK, surveyed nearly 1000 prospective donors, and looked at the effect of two different types of message on willingness to help, for both committed and uncommitted blood donors. The messages were either "benevolent", meaning that both donor and recipient benefit from donation, or "altruistic", where only the recipient benefits.

The results of the surveys found that beliefs in personal, rather than societal, benefit predicted actual future donation.

I'm not sure altruistic acts really exist.Even when it's something like anonymously giving to charity, we do it because it makes us feel better about ourselves.It may be that the gift seems large compared to the benefit, but there is still a benefit, so it's benevolent.

@anonymousI don't think involuntary behaviours count (in fact I'm sure they don't).And if someone were so deranged as to deliberately kill themself for the good of others, then my argument applies that they feel good about that behaviour and so it's not altruism.

I think people overemphasize the "feeling better about ourselves" aspect to altruistic acts. If you spend hours helping out an old person chop wood, fine, you feel OK about yourself doing it. But wouldn't you feel good, too, if you just had a beer and watched TV?

People spend incredible amounts of time and energy helping strangers, just to feel as good as if they had a snack or something? The old chestnut that altruism is truly selfish simply makes no sense as far as cost/benefit goes.

As social creatures it makes sense that there's something programmed in us to sacrifice for society simply for the sake of society. You see it in other social animal communities, so why not our own. We need to get over our philosophy classes here about humans being evil selfish monsters. We're just animals.

I believe giving your life so that someone else can survive is altruistic, especially if you don't believe in an afterlife. Like saving a kid from a burning building or getting hit by a car, but sacrificing your life in the process. If there is an altruistic act out there, I believe that would be it.

Feeling good drinking beer is completely different than feeling good helping others.

If you ever played "The SIMS" you'd know that you need different things fulfilled in order to feel good in general. So if you don't have a girl for say 2 years, even if you have everything else you'll still feel like crap.

To feel good in general you need:

- Socializing- Romance- Sex- Fun- Work- Time with yourself alone

So you can have as many beers as you like, if you don't have sex, romance, socializing, fun and work, you will NOT feel good.

Of course I am talking about medium-long term good not the very short term good. ;)

I'd love to give blood but the fact that I'm a gay male prevents it. I've been in a 7yr monogomous relationship and know that I am safe just as much as a heterosexual couple in the same situation. It saddens me sometimes to see the blood services begging for donators yet they limit themselves. I understand they have to take risks into conciderations but how much more of a risk am I compared to a straight male or a gay female that live similar lives? They should re-evaluate their questioning to be more open to the fact that even though there is a high rate of gay promiscuity, there are those that live a "normal" life like any other relationship in our society.

Altruism is the opposite of selfishness. Not counting the doughnuts, a blood donor is doing an altruistic act. Just because they feel good about it doesn't mean they gain from it. They are just in delusion. This delusion is good. It helps motivate us to do good for others without a reward. If I give blood but force myself to feel bad, does that make the situation any better? The goal is to selflessly give our resources to another, not to feel like crap. Where is the science in this article anyway?

But even if I feel good morally or spiritually, etc. after donating blood, physically it's draining (no pun intended). So there's no net benefit to me, as I feel better in some ways and worse in others. But 'society' (or at least the person receiving my blood) does receive a net benefit. Therefore, altruistic. Anyway, the original OED definition doesn't mention the self, only the act.

Altruism, evolutionarily speaking, has survival value for the species. The "feel-good" component reinforces this, and perpetuates the behavior within the species, by providing benefit to the individual. Just Nature's way of encouraging us to keep looking out for each other.

Helping others with the expectation of getting help from someone else or at a future date is not altruism. It is reasoned self-interest and may be rational if the net outcome is more happiness, higher productivity or better average health or whatever metric you want to use.

If true altruism existed and was widespread it would lead to a situation where everyone is all too willing to sacrifice their happiness for no or insufficient returns; with a net result of less happiness, productivity or whatever metric you choose.

Feeling is a mental (subjective) phenomena. Someone feeling good or bad doesn't means he/she is gaining or losing something. Gaining/Losing is a objective phenomena.I'll count the act of donating blood as Altruistic because what we gain is subjective and not material gain.May be you need a bit more understanding about the meaning of Altruism or may be we need to re-define it, otherwise this word will be meaning less.

The fact that feeling good is a subjective gain is irrelevant, it's still a gain. Increased self worth due to being charitable (with blood or money) is a measurable gain, even if it's not a physical one.I never suggested that altruism was selfish, I was really suggesting that it doesn't exist and that it's all benevolence, ie mutual gain.

In the example of dying whilst saving someones life, presumably the dying is not a deliberate exchange, it's a risk that you choose to take, with the personal reward being deemed worth that risk. There are very few situations where you could consciously exchange your life with someone elses, and in those cases it would normally be done out of love... which is in the example of a parent saving a child, a bit like the selfish gene expressing itself isn't it...Would anyone offer to take the place of a stranger who was about to be executed, just out of altruism? I'd say that those people are actually mentally unbalanced, rather than altruistic.

fantastic steve, i don't believe in altruism and to me everything is in balance, from perceived benefit to perceived loss. the question i couldn't figure out was that of giving your life for another, and i'm glad you cleared that up for me. thanks. great post.

Is a sense of personal satisfaction enough to transform altruism into selfishness? That argument is pedantically pointless, and perverts the sense of the word "altruism" into a philosophical construct unrelated to the real world.